Three quick but very important notes, before getting into the details:

Firstly, this policy contains information for everyone, not just those accepting donations - not knowing the rules will not excuse one from disciplinary action.

Secondly, abuse or breach of this policy for any purpose may result in staff action. Depending on the abuse in question, this may range from temporary suspension of donation link privileges to a permanent ban from the site.

Finally, staff reserve the right to manage donation links as they deem necessary on the wiki, in order to deal with anything not already dealt with by the rules below. Additionally, the staff take no responsibility for someone taking your money and not delivering, and have absolutely no way to recompense you.

We voted on donation links, and these are the results:

The policy going forward is that both tip jar and Patreon-style donation links will be allowed.

They will be allowed on both member pages and project pages.

Patreon campaigns for writing SCP articles - and other article types - will be allowed, and members will not be allowed to post donation links in comments for articles and tales.

The resultant policy is below.

Things you may do:

In short, you can have a donation link on your author page or on a project page, and you can donate to other people via their donation links. NB: You may not post the donation link elsewhere on the site, or otherwise solicit donations outside of these pages.

You may make a single announcement comment once you have added a donation link to your author or project page in the comments of that page, but the comment may not contain the link itself.

A project page is defined as a page dedicated to an ongoing non-standard-page project - such as an SCP webcomic, art gallery, podcast page, or game. This may include the content of such a project or it may merely be a splash page in order to connect an offsite project (including works which are wholly or primarily written) with our community.

"Standard Pages" are SCPs, GOI formats, tales, and SCP variants such as -Js.

Project pages and projects are an important category because they are the ones an offsite project may use to connect with our community.

Things you must do:

If you post a donation link, you must be clear about when people will be charged. Patreon has the option to pay people per creation or monthly, and unexpected charges may cause financial problems for our members.

You must deliver any promised content once paid. Failure to do so may result in staff action. If you are going to be delayed in your delivery of promised content, make staff and your donators aware of the situation as soon as possible.

If you pay someone via a donation link, you must be aware that it is caveat emptor - buyer beware. The staff take no responsibility for someone taking your money and not delivering, and have absolutely no way to recompense you.

You must make sure you are doing nothing illegal in donating, accepting donations, selling content, or purchasing content, and you must adhere to the terms of service of any donation site used.

You must follow the license when making any derivative works of SCP wiki content and also ensure that any content you intend to make money from is allowed to be used commercially. 173's picture, for example, can not be used commercially. You may be legally liable to the content creator if you make a mistake with this.

In addition to these basic responsibilities, we would urge you to report suspicious donation links to staff immediately in #site17.

Things you absolutely may not do:

Staff absolutely may not accept money for performing staff duties.

Per the above rule, you may not attempt to bribe staff or pay them for performing staff duties in general.

You may not scam people. This is the brand new fastest way to a permanent ban.

You may not attempt to buy or sell votes on the site.

You may not solicit donations for content to be delivered on the site which breaks the rules of the site.

You may not excessively advertise your articles or overly bother people about downvoting/reading them. Rule of thumb, if you ask a friend why they didn't like your article that's probably ok - if you ask someone you rarely or never interact with, you're probably bothering them. A reasonable degree of plugging will still be allowed, but your articles should generally speak for themselves.

You may not breach the site rules by way of giving or accepting donations in any manner.

You may not set up a donation link for any person or organisation but yourself or the organisation behind a project. You may not advertise anything as "proceeds going to x" where x is any person or organisation but yourself. This is to prevent additional political squabbling and charity scams.

You may not advertise your donation link on this site outside of your author page or the relevant project page.

You may not create donation-incentivised competitions. For example, "first person to write a tale about my author avatar that reaches +100 gets €5" will not be allowed.

You may not use certain components of "special case" articles which have parts that are not under the site's license for things which are making money. 173's picture, for example, may not be used commercially. You may be legally liable to the content creator if you make a mistake with this.